It Begins with You

PSAs for television and radio form the core of the campaign; they are refreshed every six months and are planned for broadcast over the next three to five years. In addition, participating companies integrate the themes and messages of the campaign across programming genres, including news, public affairs, and entertainment. These companies are encouraged to localise the campaign and the related issues to their specific audiences. The first set of adverts, which began airing on December 1 2006, were intended to launch and position the campaign, and to initiate discussion about the campaign's underlying theme: Imagine the Possibility of an HIV-free Generation. It Begins with YOU. The adverts featured a short messaging service (SMS) number accessible across Africa that asks viewers to share what they are doing to advance an HIV-free generation and encourages all Africans to start by knowing their HIV-status.

The campaign has developed a website that forms part of the second phase of the campaign. This tool supports ABMP's efforts to promote the vision of an HIV-free generation in Africa with the primary goal of motivating young people in particular to consider what they personally can do to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS, including: being informed, making safe choices in their relationships, using condoms if they have sex, and getting regularly tested for HIV.

As the PSAs and other materials on this website indicate, the campaign aims to use an inspirational/motivational creative approach developed by a creative consortium of participating ABMP companies and approved by the ABMP's media-led steering committee. In the launch PSAs this was conveyed by showing the link between modern-day African icons (such Reverence Desmond Tutu, Wangari Maathai, Didier Drogba, and Angélique Kidjo) and the current generation of youth as the future of Africa. The overarching theme is one of African pride, featuring a collective African identity and hope for the future. Other programming, being developed by participating companies, will reinforce these themes and promote action at individual, family, community, and national levels. With the primary focus on young people and young women in particular, subsequent phases of the campaign aim to concentrate more specifically on the principal behaviours and attitudes, as well as social and economic factors, that drive the spread of HIV among these groups, including: gender inequity, sexual coercion (forced sex), AIDS stigma, and cultural taboos.

Phase 7 of It Begins with You focused on supporting the worldwide effort to achieve universal access to prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) services and to end HIV infection in babies by 2015. As part of this phase of the campaign, the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and C-Change produced guides that are designed to provide users with broader information on the PMTCT-related issues featured in the PSAs. The step-by-step guides are designed to help media personnel develop their own talk shows, news, documentaries, and magazine programmes. There are also off-air opportunities that can be explored and integrated into existing programming schedules. These guides may be downloaded in PDF format in multiple languages on the It Begins with You website.

HIV/AIDS, Youth.